1. Fielf of the Invention
The present invention relates to a video cassette adapter, and more particularly to a manually operated video cassette adapter which is able to accommodate a VHS-C type video cassette and be inserted into a video cassette recorder for playing or recording the video cassette.
2. Description of Prior Art
Nowadays, the VHS video cassette is the most popular picture recording medium and the VHS video cassette recorder is widely used for playing or recording the VHS video cassette. The VHS video cassette has a considerably large dimension of 188 mm*104 mm*25 mm. A camera designed for such large a video cassette will consequently have large volume and heavy weight and can be hardly carried for shooting outdoors. Therefore, a VHS-C type video cassette (compact VHS video cassette) has been developed with a minimized dimension of 92 mm*59 mm*22 mm. Such a VHS-C video cassette is used with a corresponding minimized VHS-C camera which can be more easily carried. Such a VHS-C video cassette has a further advantage that the width of the tape installed therein is equal to the width of the tape in the VHS video cassette. Still more, the specification of the signal recorded in the VHS-C video cassette via a VHS-C camera is identical to that of the VHS video cassette. This permits the VHS-C video cassette to be first placed into a video cassette adapter which enlarges the size of the VHS-C video cassette into a VHS pattern and then inserted into a VHS video cassette recorder for playing.
The length of the VHS-C video cassette is 92 mm, while that of the video cassette adapter is 188 mm as the VHS video cassette. Therefore, after the VHS-C video cassette is placed into the adapter, the tape exposed at the opening of the VHS-C video cassette must be stretched to a length as that of the exposed tape of the VHS video cassette prior to the operation of the VHS video cassette recorder. The adapter includes two rotatable tape conducting members for conducting and drawing the tape in the VHS-C video cassette outward to an operation position at the opening of the adapter, ready for the operation of the recorder. A conventional manually operated video cassette adapter often fails to completely take up the tape and tends to damage the tape due to slack thereof.
Therefore, it is necessary to provide an improved video cassette adapter to solve the above problem. The improved video cassette adapter can be easily operated to draw the tape to the operation position with the tape properly tensioned. In addition, after the tape is rolled in, the tape is fully taken up without slack and thus prevented from being damaged.